


The Hearts of Horses

by glittercracker



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Historical, Horse whisperer, Horses, Kisses, M/M, Reference to animal mistreatment (mild), do not copy to another site, happy fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 17:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18526036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittercracker/pseuds/glittercracker
Summary: Killua is the son of a prominent horse-breeding family. Gon is their farrier, a servant beneath notice. They should never have crossed paths, let alone exchanged words...ah, hell! This is a killugon fic - you all know the drill!





	The Hearts of Horses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [losing_sanity_fast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/losing_sanity_fast/gifts), [mornintide](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mornintide).



> This began as a good-night kiss for two lovely friends - then it grabbed the bit and ran! Love you both, munen and mornin!

It was hot. Far too hot to be crouched under a pile of horse blankets long since hung up for the summer. But that was where Killua was, because it was always where he was at a quarter to eight in the morning on the first Monday of every second month, with the same religious precision that he reported to his father’s study every Friday at four in the afternoon to go over the estate ledgers. But unlike the appointments with his father, this one wasn’t one of his assigned duties as the heir to the Zoldyck stud farms. It wasn’t assigned, and for that matter it wasn’t really an appointment, because the only other person present was the farrier, and the farrier had no idea that he was here.

 

The whole situation was, Killua reflected as he wiped a rivulet of sweat off of his face with a damp linen sleeve, utterly absurd. He knew that. He had known that for the two years and four months that he had been keeping these non-appointments. The farrier was far enough beneath him in station to be ostensibly beneath his notice. He would be contemptible, except for the fact that the man kept the Zoldycks’ horses’ feet in perfect condition, not one bout of lameness in all the time he’d worked for them. Killua shouldn’t be able to pick him out of a crowd (though how anyone could ever forget his sunny smile and bright bronze eyes and wild black hair having seen them, he had no idea) let alone know his name (Gon Freecss—he’d combed the ledgers for it after the man had first arrived.) 

 

And he most definitely should not dream of him. But he did.

 

Every night the beautiful farrier worked his way into Killua’s dreams. If he was honest with himself, not all of the dreams were sleeping ones. Often enough he’d caught himself imagining the way that Gon’s work-scarred hands might feel on his own well-kept skin; if they would still his churning mind and heart the way that they stilled even the most skittish of the horses; if his lips would taste of berries and salt, as they looked like they would. The other dreams, the night-time ones, he hardly dared let himself think about in the daytime. Too dangerous, with everyone watching. Too dangerous when he was exercising the precious horses, so intelligent and sensitive that they would pick up on his unrest and throw him before he even realized that he’d felt it himself.

 

Gon wasn’t their only farrier, but he was by far their best. In truth, he was wasted in his position. He ought to have been a groom, or a trainer, but those jobs came through connections that Gon didn’t have. Killua had looked into that as well, wishing to promote him—but Gon was no one in that grand scheme, a child with no known mother, abandoned by his father, raised in poverty by an aunt and her aging grandmother. 

 

Still, Killua had raised the question with his father once. 

 

“Who?” Silva had said, frowning. 

 

“Gon Freecss. The one you just hired.”

 

Silva’s lip had curled. “That half-breed farrier, train our horses? Have you gone mad?”

 

Killua had never brought it up again; but he’d kept his appointments.

 

Now, the horse that Gon was working on shied, jolting Killua back to the present. Hari was a beautiful bay mare, the best of her year’s foals, and she was Illumi’s. At six years old she was in her prime, and ought to have been the Zoldyck’s pride, but she hated her master and she bore the welts of his bad temper, physical and psychological, inflicted when she would not bow to him. She rarely bowed to him, and for that, Killua held her in the utmost respect. But it meant that she suffered, and that made her difficult to handle.

 

“Hush, Hari,” Gon said to her in a soft, sing-song tone, stroking her neck and then, when she shied at that, scratching her withers, which she allowed. “Something’s wrong with your fetlock, no?” Still scratching, moving with infinite patience, he shifted his hand gradually back to the hind foot he had lifted when she shied. This time she let him, though the whites of her eyes showed and she quivered, her red coat darkening with sweat. 

 

Gon’s hard, shrewd fingers stopped on a spot at the soft place above the back of her hoof. The horse twitched, looked around at him but let him feel it. Killua saw the farrier’s face harden with rage. He brushed at the black hair, uncovered a weeping wound. “Someone did this to you,” he said, his voice gentle for the horse though his face belied it. “Your master?”

 

_ Of course, _ Killua thought. Illumi was always trying to use his needles on his horse to subdue her, though it never worked.

 

“He doesn’t deserve you. None of them deserve any of you. But it isn’t your fault, so?” Gon stopped speaking, but ran his thumb over the mare’s wound until it closed, the skin healing, the fur growing back. 

 

_ Magic?  _ Killua thought, half-dazed. Only the Zoldycks were meant to be able to wield magic over horses, and this was more than even he could do. But there was no question that Gon had healed her hurt. Hari’s ears came back from pinned to half-mast, and she began to chew at nothing. She was calm, not in pain, not in fear. 

 

Gon smiled. “Better, eh?” The horse whickered softly, nuzzled Gon’s cheek. He smiled, scratched her chin. “We still have to do that foot, sweet, but it’s hot, so—”

 

Gon pulled the hem of his stained muslin shirt out of the wrapped bands of his leather apron and then dragged it over his head. And gods, it was better than anything Killua had dreamed: muscles honed through hard work, the leanness of a man who didn’t sit bickering over tables of fine food and ledgers but earned enough to eat enough, golden skin lighter where his shirt usually covered it. 

 

He wiped his face and neck on the shirt, and then cast it over the door to the stall where Killua was hiding. Killua fell back instinctively, knocking over several feed buckets in the process and sprawling on his back in the dust. He heard Hari whinny and prance, Gon trying to soothe her and then, when he had succeeded, the inevitable footsteps approaching the door to the storeroom—half open, with nowhere for him to run.

 

Gon peered over it, meeting Killua’s eyes with a frank look, a half-smile, and not a shred of embarrassment in regards to his half-nakedness. “You know,” he said, his warm, deep voice placid, assured, “I’d actually picked this day to speak to you. Guess the gods agreed, eh?”

 

Killua could only stare at him and gape. Picked this day? Gon had known he was here?  _ For how long? _

 

“You know, you didn’t have to hide,” he continued. “You could have just come and spoken to me if you were concerned for the quality of my work.”

 

“I—no, I wasn’t. You do good work. But I couldn’t speak to you.” That was wrong. He knew it was wrong, even though it was true. He had to say something else, the right thing, but his stubborn mind stuck on the question: how long had Gon  _ known? _

 

Worse, Gon’s smile had vanished. “Oh. I see. I thought that since you took an interest in my work, you might have overlooked—”

 

_ Oh, gods, no! He couldn’t think—  _ “No! Please! I did! I do! It’s just that—”

 

“A Zoldyck can’t sink to speak to a farrier?” Gon asked, his face hard, eyes blazing as brightly as his blacksmith’s fire.

 

“Gon—”

 

The farrier’s face and eyes churned through a slow transformation. Killua couldn’t read all of the emotions, but he understood the last one: interest. “Yes, Killua?”

 

Killua was shocked again, silent for a moment. No one addressed him by his given name except for his family. But this man did, brazenly and entirely unashamedly.

 

“It’s…it’s an honor to speak with you.”

 

Gon cocked his head, studied him, as his perfect chest dripped sweat. He seemed entirely unaware of its effect on the other man. “I think,” Gon said at last, “that speaking is not what you have been wishing to do with me.”

 

Killua’s eyes shot up to Gon’s, blood flooding his face and remorse his heart. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed to make himself say. “I would never—”

 

To his shock, Gon burst into laughter. “Oh, I know that! Do you think that I’d have let you watch so long if I’d thought you were the type of nobleman to take advantage of the servants?”

 

“You are  _ not  _ a servant!” Killua cried.

 

Gon blinked at him, clearly stunned. “I—Lord—”

 

“Don’t,” Killua said. “Don’t call me by any title. Please. The one I have I don’t deserve, and…”

 

There was a long silence. Finally, Gon said, “Killua, did you ever hurt your horse in trying to master him?”

 

Killua’s eyes shot up again to Gon’s. “Yuki? No, of course not! I love him! I caught him as he came from his mother’s womb and…” He sighed. “I can’t say that he has always known kindness, but when he has not, it has not been from me.”

 

Gon gave his curt nod once again. “You know that your brother hurts the horses?”

 

“Yes,” Killua answered, barely above a whisper.

 

“And you don’t agree with this?”

 

“No. But I don’t know how to stop it.”

 

Gon gave a concise nod, put down the hoof-clippers he was holding and stepped toward Killua. “Do you want to?”

 

“Yes. I want to.”

 

“Mmm.” His gold-brown eyes were incisive, cleaving into Killua’s. “I’ve felt that in you, or I wouldn’t have let you watch for so long. But will you choose them over your family?” 

 

“Do I have a choice?”

 

“Yes,” Gon said in a tone that made Killua believe it for the first time in his life. “But they don’t. So?”

 

Killua thought of his childhood, the endless punishments and insults, the tears he’d shed that had sunk into cold stone floors. The others he’d shed into his horse’s mane, and how the tang of Yuki’s sweat had soothed him, how that broad back had borne the worst of secrets and let him give them to the wind of their speed.

 

“They  _ are  _ my family,” he said at last.

 

“One more question,” Gon said.

 

Killua quirked a half smile. “Oh?”

 

“Do you want to be with me?”

 

“I’ve never wanted anything more,” Killua said, wondering if he’d lost his mind—or, finally, found it.

 

Gon smiled, taking Killua’s head in those wide, hard palms, leaned forward, and kissed him. And he didn’t taste like salt and berries. He tasted like the wind when Killua gave Yuki his head and came as close as a human will ever come to flying. Desire spread wings inside him, threatening to beat him to pieces if he didn’t set them free. Everything he had ever known lay in shards around him, but he did know this: those shards could not be pieces back together. There was no life for him without this man by his side. 

 

As if he’d heard him, Gon pulled away and said, “Then I trust you. Open the gates, and let’s go!” 

*

There is a band of wild horses in the foothills of the Dentoran Alps. They’re as famous for their beauty and unbreakable natures as they are for the legend that encases them: a tale of two young men, one of a noble horse-breeding family and the other of the laboring class who, defying both of their worlds, freed the horses who founded the breed. The only beings they loved more than their horses were each other. And all of them lived happily ever after.

  
  
  
  


  
  



End file.
